Hello, Rombamel
The real escort work began only after they had left Rombamel behind.
Raul, the leader, would keep watch over the front.
The others had already gone to their assigned positions.
For the time being, Luca was entrusted to Elvira and Cedric.
Though today, Cedric had suffered an unfortunate accident and was lying sprawled in the carriage.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of Cedric-oppa.”
Who was the adult here, and who was the child?
At Luca’s words, Lawrence shook his head.
At the gate, the familiar sentry was waiting.
Even today, he was shaking down travelers entering and leaving the city for pocket money.
Raul greeted him as though there were nothing strange about it at all and handed over the purse.
Maren, the gatekeeper, checked the amount inside and nodded with a satisfied expression.
“Good. Five carriages may pass.”
“So many leaving this time. Hey, let them through!”
For a moment, the gatekeepers raised their voices.
Then the carriage wheels, which had been rolling along smoothly, came to a halt before the gate.
Wondering what was wrong, Lawrence moved toward the front of the line, and Raul came over to him.
“Repairing the gate?”
“Mm. Sounds like something’s gone wrong with the pulley that opens and closes it. A skilled artisan’s on his way to take a look now, so it shouldn’t take too long.”
At the word artisan, Lawrence thought of Morris and the others.
Just to be sure, he went to check the opening mechanism—and there, sure enough, was a familiar man.
“Morris?”
“Ohh. May the Goddess’s blessing be with you. It’s been a while, Lawrence.”
It was Morris.
His voice was bright as he greeted Lawrence.
“So you’re leaving Rombamel now?”
“Yes. Rombamel turned out to be a better place than I expected. Thanks to that, I was able to recover from all my fatigue.”
“Haha. Well, this is still a place where people live. If it were truly hopeless, everyone would have fled already.”
Above the gate, Jace was working alongside him.
“You’re here too, Jace.”
“It’s been a while! Have you been well, Lawrence?”
His voice was brisk.
Jace bowed his head with a curt nod.
“So you’re working here. Sounds like things went well with your apprentice?”
“Yes. They were desperately short-handed, so I haven’t had a single day off since that day—I’ve been working like this ever since.”
As if pleased that their difficult search had been worthwhile, Morris looked genuinely happy.
“That’s a relief. It isn’t easy to go to a foreign city and rely only on an acquaintance.”
“Your words are more than enough. This is all thanks to your sincere prayers, Lawrence.”
“Prayers? I’m no priest or sister. It was all because your own sincerity reached the Goddess.”
When the heart was earnest enough, even the Goddess would answer.
Lawrence knew well how much Morris cared for his family.
“This is no time to be dawdling. I should finish the work quickly—for your sake too, Lawrence.”
“Take your time. Safety comes first in work like this. If anything happened to you because of me, I wouldn’t have the face to meet your family.”
The opening mechanism was a large lever linked to a pulley.
You could think of it as a larger version of the crank used for the repeating crossbow.
When turned, the chain connected to the pulley would move, opening and closing the gate.
But right now, the mechanism was acting up.
The crank had rusted so badly that the force wasn’t being transferred properly, and the chain was jerking and catching.
As a result, the gate would neither open nor close, left hanging awkwardly in place.
At this rate, the roof of the carriage would strike it, and they wouldn’t be able to leave the city.
It wasn’t a particularly time-consuming repair.
Replace the crank, untangle the chain, and that should be the end of it.
Fixing the chain running through the mechanism looked harder than replacing the crank, but surprisingly, Morris and Jace moved together with the perfect rhythm of old friends who had known each other for a decade.
At this rate, it looked like they’d finish in less than ten minutes.
How long had Lawrence been watching the two of them work when, suddenly, he spotted men who had no business being in his line of sight.
The dog-catchers from the playground in the Gutter.
Bear and Skinny were staring at someone.
At the end of that gaze stood a sky-blue-haired girl. Luca.
Luca was carrying a water jug over to the carriage.
The way she was soaking a clean towel looked like she was preparing to nurse someone.
Lawrence had a bad feeling about this.
For the moment, it didn’t seem like the dog-catchers were planning to move right away.
Still, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that they’d resort to brute force.
What should he do?
Would they really start something here?
No. The risk was too high.
He didn’t know what the Gutter was like, but this was a place with plenty of people.
More importantly, corrupt or not, the gatekeeper was standing watch.
No matter how reckless they were, they wouldn’t cause a scene in front of the guards and sentries.
Which meant they’d make their move only after the city was behind them.
Once the gate had been passed, there’d be no reason to care about the gatekeeper’s eyes anymore. They’d probably mean to finish things quietly then.
After a brief moment of thought, Lawrence opened his mouth.
“Morris. I’m terribly sorry, but could I ask you for a favor?”
Morris, still focused on the repair, replied, “If it’s your request, Lawrence, I’d listen to ten of them, not just one.”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary.”
“I mean it. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“……”
His hesitation was brief.
That alone told him enough to trust the man’s response.
“Could you make the gate malfunction for a little while?”
“A malfunction? You mean like this situation now?”
Morris pointed to the gate hanging in place, neither rising nor falling.
“Yes. More precisely, I’d like it so that after our carriage passes through, the gate won’t be able to open again for a while.”
The hand working on the pulley stopped.
“Lawrence. If I’m misunderstanding something, I’ll apologize first. Are you being chased by someone?”
“You really can’t fool Morris, can you? That’s right. Rombamel lies outside the Church’s reach, so there don’t seem to be many who look kindly on the clergy.”
Lawrence gave a bitter smile and glanced back.
“If that’s the case, then of course I should help. How about this? I’ll go ahead and break it so the lever won’t budge for a while.”
“You’d deliberately break the lever? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
“No. This mechanism is already broken, and we’re here to fix it. It’s not the first time, and it gives trouble often enough that no one will suspect a thing.”
Morris wiped rust from the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand.
“Don’t worry. Leave things like this to professionals like us. Let’s see… if I take the repair time into account, I can buy you about two hours. Do you need any more than that?”
Two full hours.
Lawrence had been thinking he’d be lucky to get thirty minutes, so he brightened immediately.
“That’s more than enough.”
There were no horses visible around the dog-catchers.
They must have intended to follow the moment the party left the city.
Even if they were on foot, they wouldn’t need to rush the instant the carriage rolled out; if they seized that brief gap, they could keep up without much trouble.
But two hours, not thirty minutes.
By the time the dog-catchers emerged from the city, the party’s carriages would already be racing across the Rival Plains.
There was no way they could catch them.
“Ever since we first met, I’ve done nothing but owe you, Morris.”
“Please don’t say that. Our whole family settled safely in Rombamel thanks to you, Lawrence.”
Lawrence held out his hand.
Morris hesitated before taking it.
His hand was covered in rust and grease.
Seeing that he was about to wipe it on his clothes, Lawrence forcibly took it anyway.
“No, what am I going to do? Your hand will get dirty.”
His flustered fussing was exactly the same as it had been the first time they met, without a single thing changed.
“Thank you, Morris. I’ll pray that the Goddess’s blessing is with you.”
“And I hope you’ll have a safe pilgrimage as well. May the Goddess’s blessing be with you too.”
Morris gave Jace, perched atop the gate, a signal.
The crank turned with a powerful grind.
Kugugung.
The gate, which had been stuck halfway, opened fully.
“What’s this? Is it already done? Can we pass?”
“Yes, sir! It looks like you can go through!”
“Hey. Move it through.”
The gypsies’ carriages passed the gate.
All five of them.
Because the wait had been long, everyone’s steps were lighter and quicker now.
Lawrence, too, followed the carriages out of the city at the very back of the line.
As though they had been waiting for this moment, the dog-catchers sprang into motion.
Maren stopped Skinny and Bear as they approached the gate.
“What now? You don’t see the line here?”
“Oh, dear. Thank you for your hard work. We’ve got a real hurry to get out of the city right now.”
“Look at these two. Seems like you think the folks behind you aren’t in a rush either.”
Maren gave a scoffing laugh, incredulous.
The other gatekeepers nearby chuckled along with him.
Faced with that laughter, Skinny took out a money pouch.
Inside, silver coins flashed into view.
“We’re really sorry, but could you work with us here? Just this once, if you’d turn a blind eye.”
“Mm! All right, all right. I can see you’ve got your reasons, so I’ll let it slide this one time.”
The exchange moved too quickly.
They hadn’t even bought enough time for the minimum.
Perhaps because the amount of money was different, Maren stepped aside at once.
There was still no sign of the gate closing.
Was Morris’s work not finished yet?
He needed to buy time.
The moment that thought took shape, Lawrence stretched out a hand.
“Shadow Light.”
A sphere of light rose before the gate.
At the instant the dog-catchers raised a hand to shield their eyes from the sudden brilliance, Jace’s voice rang out.
“Watch your feet!”
The shout had barely died when a heavy crash thundered through the air.
At the sound of that violent impact behind them, the gypsies in the carriage poked their heads out.
The gate they had just passed through was now firmly shut.
“W-what the hell was that?!”
“Malfunction! The gate’s broken again!”
“Broken?”
A fair amount of commotion broke out.
There was the murmur of many voices, and it seemed people had gathered to see what was going on.
Lawrence stepped a little away from the carriage and listened.
On the other side of the wall was the place where Morris had been repairing the mechanism.
“What the hell? What did you do to it?”
“How do you usually maintain this thing? The joints in the mechanism are completely rotten!”
“Joints? What joints are you talking about? You liar! Up until now it’s only ever malfunctioned—it’s never been this wrecked before!”
Maren’s voice grew louder.
At nearly a shout, Morris answered without yielding.
“You’re saying I’m lying? That’s absurd. If you know the mechanism so well, why don’t you fix it yourself, gatekeeper sir? There’s a limit to looking down on a professional’s words.”
Lawrence could hear Morris snorting derisively.
“Everyone, listen here. I’m an artisan from Albrade who’s spent his entire life fixing this sort of thing. I only recently came to Rombamel, so I don’t know everything, but hasn’t this gate always been troublesome? Judging by the state of the mechanism, today can’t be the first time it’s acted up. Isn’t that right?”
The people around them began to chime in.
“Well, it’s always been in bad shape, and people used to come by to look at it.”
“The artisan’s right. This is the first time it’s come apart like this, but the gate’s trouble was real.”
“Pretty impressive skill. To know that without even seeing it directly….”
“I’ve heard of Albrade Port too. They say it’s the city of craftsmen, where the kingdom’s best artisans gather.”
Maren’s rebuttal was drowned out by the crowd.
“Go ahead and bring in dozens of experts if you want. Ten out of ten of them will say exactly what I’m saying. Are you still going to call me a liar, gatekeeper sir?”
“No, that’s… you can tell all that?”
“Of course I can. And now the chain inside the pulley’s snapped clean through, so the parts will have to be replaced.”
“Damn it…. Fine. I’ll apologize. Sorry for calling you a liar. So how long do you think it’ll take?”
“Wait and see. We’ll have to go to the shop and fetch new parts. Finding the right piece and fixing it… it’ll take at least two hours.”
“Two hours? Did you say two hours just now?”
“That’s if we don’t even take a breath.”
The exchange of curses continued briefly, then Maren gave in.
“Fine. Fine. Just hurry up and fix it.”
“And the payment?”
“You want money too? You’ve got no knife, but you’re just a thief, aren’t you?”
“We’re the ones who have to replace the parts because of poor maintenance. You expect us to pay for that?”
Jeers rose from the crowd.
The townspeople had fully taken Morris’s side, one after another.
“Isn’t the money going to come from above anyway? You don’t need to worry about it, gatekeeper sir.”
“Damn it. I’m losing my mind, seriously. Fine. Fine. Enough talk—just fix it first.”
After hearing that much, Lawrence hurried to catch up with the departing carriages.
Thank goodness.
Not only the pursuit, but Morris as well—he no longer had to worry about either of them.
The flustered Morris from the gate was nowhere to be seen now.
In his place stood only a veteran artisan already well accustomed to Rombamel’s way of life.
His eyes met Jace’s, who was sitting atop the gate.
The man rose from his seat and gave a respectful bow.
The rest could be left to him.
Lawrence moved along the back of the carriage.
Before long, the border city of Rombamel had dwindled to a dot in the distance.